There is a sense that The Love Nest, one of Keaton’s lightest and most carefree films, contains a seam of melancholy. Perhaps it is the awareness that with this last short, the glorious era of two-reelers – the sparkling and undisputed leading force of every double-bill up to the early 1920s – came to an end. Or perhaps it’s because we know it to be one of the last pairings of Buster Keaton and his old antagonist ‘Big’ Joe Roberts. The same goes for Virginia Fox, only caught in a glimpse. The Love Nest can be drunk in one sip, and even if the set is a small whaling ship, the conflict is simple and the main plot rather fragile, so the gags and the action flow generously. We owe some of that to Elgin Lessley, who under Keaton’s direction created some very graceful and open compositions. “The white and empty space is so much”, writes Walter Biggins, “that depending on the frame, we perceive the presence of an entire unexplored world or an unlimited void”.

Cecilia Cenciarelli